As the Devil Dares (Capturing the Carlisles #3)(93)
“He left me,” Evelyn choked out between sobs. “He rode off without even looking back…”
“I know.” She placed a kiss on her forehead. “But I’m here now, with Mrs. Smith and Whitby. We’re here to take you home.”
“I didn’t know what I was going to do. I was so frightened,” she admitted, and Mariah realized that part of her sister’s tears were also cries of relief. “I don’t have any money, barely any clothes…I didn’t have any way to buy a seat on the coach, or even to purchase food.”
Anger burned inside her. If Mariah ever saw Burton Williams again, she’d flay the man alive! Evelyn could have been hurt. Or worse. “I’m here now, so you don’t have to worry about any of that. Everything will be all right.” Perhaps if she said it enough, she’d believe it, too. “It will all be fine.”
“How?” She lifted her head and looked at Mariah through tear-blurred eyes. “I ran off with a man,” she whispered, as if afraid she might be overhead. “I’ll be ruined!”
“No, you won’t. I’ll make certain of it.” Somehow.
Mariah refused—absolutely refused—to let Evie’s life be ruined over a mistake of love. She would find a way to keep her sister’s reputation intact, whatever it took. Williams was an arse, yet she suspected that even he would keep quiet. After all, if he dared to utter a word about this, he’d be forced to marry her anyway, plunging himself into the meager life he was so desperately attempting to avoid. And since she, Mrs. Smith, and Whitby were all here now, anyone who saw them returning to London would assume they were all traveling together and that Evelyn had been accompanied the entire time.
Together, on the ride home, they would come up with some reason for why they’d traveled north in case they ever needed an explanation, then never speak of it again. Mrs. Smith would keep her silence because she loved Evie like a daughter, and Whitby wouldn’t speak a word if Mariah asked him. He might be a bit of a dandy, but he was also loyal to a fault.
Evelyn shook her head, swiping the handkerchief at her eyes. “I’m such a fool!”
“It isn’t your fault,” she countered firmly, not wanting Evie to blame herself. “He’s the blackguard in this, not you.”
“He didn’t force me to go.” Her shoulders sagged, as if those few words thoroughly explained the ruin that her life would now become. “I went willingly.”
Mariah’s face softened as she brushed a stray curl from Evelyn’s cheek. “Because you loved him. There’s no sin in that.”
“Is there sin in being a reckless goose?” Evelyn gave a self-deprecating grimace. “I should have known better. You tried to warn me, but I didn’t listen.”
For once, Mariah took no pride in being right.
“He stopped by the house and surprised me,” she explained, the sobs finally dying away. “He had a ring, said he wanted to talk to Papa to offer marriage…but Papa was out, so of course he couldn’t.”
“Of course.” And highly convenient, since he most likely knew that Henry Winslow would refuse.
“So we sat in the garden, talking and planning about how our life together would be…I was so happy.” But the look on her face now was one of pure misery. “I don’t remember who brought it up first, but we agreed that we hated to wait to be married.”
“So he suggested that you elope instead,” Mariah added gently.
“No,” she whispered, guilty recrimination darkening her face. “I did.”
Anguish tightened her chest. “Oh, Evie.”
“He agreed, and the next thing I knew, I was packing a bag and writing that note to explain where I’d gone so you wouldn’t worry.”
And cleverly sent it to the school instead of to the office so that she and Williams would have time to get a head start before anyone realized they’d run off. But Mariah knew not to bring up that bit of recklessness. Evie already felt humiliated enough.
“I thought he was being romantic, that he loved me too much to wait to make me his wife.” Shamefully shaking her head at her gullibility, Evelyn closed her eyes. “How could I have been such a fool?”
“Because we always want to believe the best of the men we love,” Mariah whispered.
The truth behind her words was brutal. Her eyes blurred, and she inhaled a pain-filled breath to fight back new tears. Evie had been wrong about Burton Williams, but how had Mariah been so blind about Robert? She thought she’d come to know him well during the past several weeks, that those hours spent bare and vulnerable in each other’s arms only confirmed the goodness she saw in him. When in fact he’d only been scheming to make certain that the partnership was his by working to destroy all she held dear.
She’d been so very wrong.
“When the mail coach stopped here yesterday evening, we decided to spend the night,” Evelyn continued, dabbing at her eyes and the last remnants of tears even as her voice grew steadier. “But nothing happened between us, I swear to you. Nothing. I’d never be so foolish as to give myself to a man who hadn’t yet married me.”
Mariah winced. She had been exactly that foolish. And where had it gotten her? More misery than she’d had in her entire life.
Most likely, Robert did care about her, enough to make love to her so tenderly that it had brought tears to her eyes. But in the end, he’d cared about the partnership more. When she’d stood there in the shipping offices and heard him admit to what he’d done, the shock and pain at losing her last connection to her mother at his hands had been unbearable. The sudden grief had been overwhelming, and she’d felt as if she lost her mother all over again.